a revelation for him. he kind of liked the whole family thing. he brought his family there so the saudis liked that and he kind of looked around that rather glorious looking room and said, hey, this is the way i like to decorate. i think he field home there. >> house of trump, house of saud. thank you both. that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. we are following several different stories that continue to develop into the late evening tonight. in terms of a time difference, it is five hours ahead of american east coast difference in england. so it's after 2:00 in the morning now in england. that country is now not only dealing with the aftermath of that horrific bombing of that pop concert in manchester, england, last night, which claimed 22 lives. they are also now officially

calling it a critical alert level in britain. we used to have that color-coded alert system after 9/11. we no longer have that. we have the national terrorism advisory syst, which sends out targeted alerts for specific incidents and specific places. but in britain, they've still got a nationwide alert system and tonight, theresa may raised their nationwide alert level to critical, which in the prime minister words means, another attack may be imminent in great britain. now, this critical alert level means that they are deploying troops in the streets. they are putting the british military in the street alongside british police. there have been raids today in britain. there has been at least one arrest reportedly in conjunction with last night's bombing. there's been a lot of controversy about u.s. officials and u.s. news sources publishing

the name of the man believed to have been the bomber, the suicide bomber. we're going to have more on that story and have the latest from london and from manchester coming up in a few minutes in this hour. here at home today, new developments in the scandal plaguing our new presidential administration, continued to overshadow more current events, continuing to overshadow the footage and the pool reports from the president's first overseas trip. we don't know why, but two of the president's very top advisers, his senior strategist, steve bannon, and hishief of staff, reince priebus, they appear to have been sent home early from the foreign trip. we know each of them made it as far as saudi arabia, which was the first stop on the trip. and the white house insists that the plan all along was for them to just go to saudi arabia and then fly right back. but honestly, there's no contemporaneous record of any such plan for reince priebus and steve bannon. and although we do not know why

they have been sent home early while the rest of the administration is still abroad with trump, it would not be strange, given the circumstances, if the administration felt like they needed to get some of their top people home right quick, even in the middle of that trip, to try to keep a lid on what is going on here. >> we issued two subpoenas to the two michael flynn businesses that we're aware of, flynn intel llc and flynn intel inc, both located in virginia, with this specific list of documents because while we disagree with general flynn's lawyers interpretation of a taking a fifth, it's even more clear that a business does not have the right to take a give if if it's a corporation. one has been served. one is in the process of being served. >> one has been served. one is in the process of being served. today that was the senate

intelligence committee chairman richard burr and the top democratic of intel mark warner on the right side of your screen. they are announcing a new round of subpoenas that they sent out today in the trump russia investigation. this targets mike flynn and specifically his businesses. now, we know that mike flynn is currently fighting the committee's subpoena to testify and to happened over the documents. the committee is hashing it out with flynn's lawyers in terms of what he's able to take the fifth on. but meanwhile, as of late this afternoon, they are sending subpoenas to his businesses and businesses that senator warner said they can't take the fifth. businesses are not people, my friend. and if you needed any further assurance that the trump/russia investigation is all about following the money, it's very much about businesses and business ties and banking records and finances.

also consider the late-breaking news today reported first by fox business and now confirmed by nbc news that the president has now chosen his private counsel who he will use to try to save his presidency, to the extent that his presidency has to be saved by legal maneuvering. in 2005, a "new york times" reporter named timothy o'brien went on to be the business section editor at the knew y"th times." he published this book about donald trump. one of the things he claimed in this book, "trump nation," was that donald trump wasn't a billionaire. timothy o'brien's book said that trump wasn't worth even $1 billion. he was closer to $250 million in terms of his net worth. d you know, like who would be mad about that, right? once you're at 250 million nar, i think we can all agree you're

spectacularly rich and who cares if you're that rich or even richer than that, right? who cares? but donald trump really cared a lot about that, cared so much that he sued timothy o'brien for that book, specifically for saying in that book that donald trump wasn't a billionaire. and you know, it was clever. in the event that trump wasn't a billionaire, he came up with a way to solve that problem with that lawsuit because he sued timothy o'brien over that book for $5 billion in damages, which is hilarious. and what resulted was a ridiculous lawsuit. that was basically a suit in which trump tried to prove his net worth, tried to prove that he was a multibillionaire and that gave rise to the famous definition where trump claimed that his net worth rose and fell according to his feelings on any given day. that's how he tried to prove that he was a billionaire.

and so, no, he didn't prove that he was a billionaire. he brought the lawsuit insisting that he can prove in court how much he was worth. in that lawsuit, it turns out that he could not show in court that his net worth was somehow magically larger than what he could prove. he didn't win the case. he didn't get his $5 billion in damages from "the new york times" reporter. the trump lawsuit about that book was dismissed and then trump appealed that court ruling and then his appeal was dismissed. but now, it's interesting, the lawyer who brought that case for trump, the man who masterminded the idea of suing a "new york times" reporter for $5 billion to prove trump was a billionaire and then not being able to prove trump was a billionaire once they got it into court so reporter won that, the lawyer who hmasterminded that case is now the lawyer who our next president has retained to be his counsel on, quote, matters related to the russia

investigation. sure, why not him? well, lawyer mark kasawitz played a role in the lawit against trump university in which he had to settle. he was involved in the restructuring of the massive and controversial debt in trump's atlantic casinos. his most recent high-profile gig since trump has been president, though, has been on another matter. and you might have heard about this. you might have heard about this. a few weeks ago, maybe a month or two ago, the first high-profile thing that trump's lawyer has been involved with since trump's been president is that he was taken on as the counsel to represent a russian state-controlled bank. of course he was. spur bank, if you don-- sberbans

the largest-run bank in russia. there's a massive civil lawsuit against sberbank for destroying granite in russia and when the biggest state-controlled bank needed counsel in new york to defend them on that this year, they picked a man otherwise famous for being donald trump's lawyer, the lawyer who he uses, for example, for suing "the new york times". if reports tonight are accurate, that's who will be leading trump's legal team for the question about whether the trump campaign corroborated in that attack in any way. and to that point, the man who was the director of the cia, when the russian attack on our election was happening last year, the man who was the director of the cia at the time

any such coop operation or llusion would have mhappen if it happened, today he testified as to what he saw last year as cia director. he testified as to what he saw, what he believed it might have meant and why he believed it was serious enough at the time that his agency took what it had found out through foreign spying and they handed that to the fbi last summer, which is what started the fbi's counterintelligence investigation of trump and russia last summer. >> i was convinced in the summer that the russians were trying to interfere in the election, and they were very aggressive. it was a multifaceted effort. i wanted to make sure that we were able to expose that as much as possible. >> but was there intelligence that said that the trump campaign was colluded with moscow during their campaign that -- >> the russian intelligence services were actively involved in this effort and having been

involved in many counter intelligence cases in the past, i know what they try to do. they try to get u.s. individuals to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly and i was worried by a number of the contacts that the russians had with u.s. persons and so, therefore, by the time i left the office on january 20th, i had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the russians had been successful in gettinu. persons involved in the campaign o not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion. and so therefore i felt that the fbi investigation was certainly well-founded and needed to look into those issues. but i know that there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not u.s. persons were actively conspireing, colluding with russian officials.

>> did you see evidence of collusion, coordination, conspiracy between donald trump and russian state actors? >> i saw information and intelligence that was worthy of investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not such cooperation of collusion was taking place. >> that doesn't help us a lot. >> that doesn't help us a lot? what are you looking for help with? because if what you're looking for is the cia director assessment of whether there was a well-grounded basis to start the fbi's counterintelligence investigation into the sitting president and his campaign and the question of whether they colluded with russia, which continues to this day and is unprecedented in american history, if that's what you're looking for, it definitely helps a lot with that. because he apparently is the

one. cia director john brennan is the one who is basically saying that the information that the cia was able to observe, what he was able to see as cia director last year was worrying enough that it was handed to the bureau and that's what started that investigation. i think that's very helpful to understanding what happened. former cia director brennan also helped everyone understand today, maybe for the first time in open session, how this kind of thing might have worked, how the -- if this was a russian op, if our election was, in part, a foreign intelligence operation, how might the russians conceivably have pulled this off? if there was any american coop operati cooperation with what they did, how did the russians do that if they did succeed in getting american collusion, if they succeeded in getting the trump campaign to collude with them, how might that have worked even if the trump folks didn't start

off intending to decide with another country against our own, how could the russians have done it? watch this. >> i have studied russian intelligence activities over the years and i have seen it manifest in many different cases and how they have been able to get people, including the cia, to become treasonness and equently individuals who go along a treasonous path don't even realize it until it's a bit too late. my radar goes up early when i see certain things, i know what the russians are trying to do and i don't know whether the targets of their efforts are as mindful of the russian intentions as they need to be. it is traditional intelligence collection which is to identify individuals that you think are either very influential or rising stars and you will try to

develop a relationship with them and the russians frequently will do that through cutouts or false operations. they won't present themselves as russians or members of the russian government. and then over time they will try to get individuals to do things on their behalf and that's why, again, having been involved in a lot of counterintelligence cases over the years and seeing this pattern over and over again, my radar goes up when i see that the russians are actively involved in a particular intelligence, operation or campaign and that u.s. persons are being contacted by russian officials. >> see, in some ways, all of us who are watching this unfold every day, this remarkable news, we are all stumped by the trump/russia story because as americans we all know american politics. we know that the range of things that can happen in american politics, or at least we thought we did.

but things like this trump/russia thing, they don't happen in american politics and so they are foreign to us and everything about it is unexpected. but things like this do happen in russian espionage efforts. this is foreign to us as politics. this is not foreign to john brennan as a lifelong observer as russian espionage efforts. ask the people who understand how the russians work. ask how russian foreign intelligence operations -- how russian active measures against foreign enemies, how those things work and to them it sort of makes sense when they look at it through russian eyes. so hearing about how the russians approach an op like this, how they approach americans, how they try to persuade americans to ultimately betray our country, that is helpful for figuring out what the russians might have been hoping for and trying for here, even though he would don't know

if the trump associates they contacted went along with it. and there's one last thing that came up today. this is the last thing. and this isn't even an uglier prospect. that was always raised today in this questioning with the former cia director. i want you to watch how cia director john brennan reacts here. so they've been talking at this hearing over the course of the remarkable testimony from brennan. and it ultimately gets to the point where they are talking almost protectively or at least em pithetically how they may have been led into it without knowing. but then eric, on the committee, gets to a very uncomfortable alternate point. he basically says, yeah,

bumbling into or accidently or innocently helping the russians, that's an interesting scenario here. but what about people who get caught concealing what they were doing with the russians? isn't that a different ball of wax? watch brennan's response here. >> director, there is what is referred to as consciousness of guilt evidence, when somebody lies about a material fact. and that fact, the fact of then lying can be used against that person because it would be, in essence, an effort to cover up what happened. meaning if you were telling the truth, you wouldn't have anything to cover up. with respect to some of the contacts you referred to between russia and trump campaign officials, are you aware of any of those u.s. persons who had contacts with russia either making false statements about those contacts or failing to disclose those contacts?

>> i think that's something that you can pursue in closed session. >> not an open session. we'll talk about that in a classified setting. so the russians may be really good in drafting americans into their schemes against the united states. but once americans are involved in those schemes and they start lying about that fact, concealing that fact, well, then that concealment, you know, takes it into a closed session. so remarkable testimony from the former cia director and, you know, new subpoenas have just gone out tonight to mike flynn's businesses in virginia, business associates of mike flynns have already received pup seubpoenas and the inquiry centering on flynn out of the u.s. attorney's office is a veteran espionage

prosecutor brought in for that purpose from the national security division of the justice department. the inspector general is investigating claims from the pentagon that flynn concealed payments from the army. the oversight committee in the house appear to show that flynn concealed evidence of his foreign payments last year on his security clearance application as well. i mean, just on that matter, mike flynn has [ inaudible ] and they continue to deny knowledge of those foreign payments to flynn, even after they were notified about that emphatically and over a period of weeks and months, multiple times, to the point where the mike pence-led transition sent a thank you for your letter to theouse oversight committee when they put in writing to the transition their concerns about mike flynn's foreign payments. so even if you take just that slice of it, just on the issue

of fik flymike flynn, when you about concealment being a complicating factor here, there would seem to be a lot of reported evidence of him trying to conceal those foreign ties and the white house trying to conceal them for him. the financial trail is lit up like broad daylight on mike flynn. multiple investigations are now thundering down that path like a convoy of semis. but we have learned tonight that there may be a problem with the financial side of all of these trump/russia investigations and we've got that ahead tonight and a lot more. stay with us. us the power to ts enemy into an ally? microsoft and its partners are using smart traps to capture mosquitoes and sequence their dna to fight disease. there are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. with the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. if we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks

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we learned about the new financial focus of the investigations of the new administration and the president's campaign was when the senate intelligence committee asked for help in its investigation from the treasury department. from the treasury department crimes enforcement network. it was reported at the time that not only had senate intel asked them for help with their investigation but the financial crimes enforcement network at the treasury department said, yes, they would turn over financial records for which they are a repository agency. if they had any records that would be relevant to the trump/russia investigation. that request by senate intel is part of how we knew that around the time the white house started freaking out and doing things like firing the fbi director, there was also this shift inhe trump/russia invesgations at the same time about checking out potential financial ties and business ties. it's part of how we observed that shift hang. now we can observe that something appears to have gone

wrong there. we first got an inkling of this last week. senator mark warner let it known that even though the treasury department was cooperating and handing over these records, in reality, they weren't handing anything over. >> we requested documentation that would be absolutely critical to the russia investigation. our ask included things like the flash notices and 14a requests. i know that we've received a preliminary response from treasury that they're quote/unquote working on it. i've got to tell you, that's not good enough. >> that was last week, tuesday of last week, hey, we're not actually getting this stuff that we requested. since then, it does not appear that things have improved and now the democrats are starting to raise a flag about this. today, the democrats on the

banking committee all voted against an otherwise noncontroversial treasury department nominee saying that they are all voting against her t to try to shake loose information from the treasury that treasury said they'd hand over for the trump/russia investigation but they haven't handed it over. >> we're staing to see the treasury starting to comply. we're trying to hone our questions more with more specificity. this is a large database. but there does need to be a sense of urgency. i had told her that i was going to support her nomination. i think she's well qualified so i would like to see a little more sense of urgency on responding to our requests. they have responded in part and what we can't -- i can't as ser

sta ascertain, is this slow walking or trying to understand the nature of our request. >> are they slow walking. that was senator mark warner calling on the treasury department to step up, start handing over these financial documents that they said they would provide for the trump/russia investigation. this is an interesting part of this investigation. obviously we have seen what appears to be a rising political stress in the white house paralleling a rising or an increased focus on financial matters and business matters in the investigations. a key part of that is this interesting part of the treasury. fincen, the financial crimes enforcement network, which has access to these key documents that everybody says will be critical to figuring out if there was any monetary aspect of the collusion being investigated by the fbi and by these committees. if this is in fact a follow the money investigation, are the committees now being impeded in

their ability to follow the money as long as they don't get these documents or not at the pace that they think they ought to? the treshly department is led by former trump fund-raiser steve mnuchin. is the trump treasury department conceivably gumming up the work on this part of the investigation? could they even do that? is the financial crimes enforcement network independent enough so that couldn't be a factor? is this just the normal course of business? we should essentially keep eyes on here or something we shouldn't worry about because they are going to be professionals here no matter how difficult it is to work out with these committees? i don't know the answer to these questions and i want to ask somebody who has close, up front information about how this agency works. joining us now is julie, a career attorney at the justice department and she's a former senior adviser at fincen, at the treasury department i should tell you, full disclosure, she

was a supporter of hillary clinton during the campaign. thank you for your years of service in government and thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> i know most of your career service was at the justice department. you spent a shorter amount of time at fincen. i'm trying to find out what fincen does. it seems like there are a lot that send their employees over to work hand in glove in fincen so lots of different agencies can get access to their records. is that a fair assessment? >> rachel, i wouldn't necessarily say that lots of agencies send their folks over to fincen on what we in the government call a detail but it happens, yes. >> and your work there, can you describe the -- can you describe what you did but also what the relationship was between an

agency like the justice department and fincen, if the department wanted to use documents that fincen might have, how would that process work? >> i served as a senior adviser to the deputy director of fincen. the deputy director is now serving as the acting director fincen. and i served as a senior adviser. i went over there as a career employee. it was not on a detail. justice did not send me. but i went over and was hired by treasury to serve in that role. with respect to your question about could other agencies get information from fincen, absolutely. fincen has the authority to share information that they collect which they collect under the secrecy act and patriot act from financial institutions and they have the ability, with that data, to analyze it to sort of

connect the dots and to the extent that they are seeing trends or issues that they think may be tied to terrorism financing or be tied to money laundering activities or other illicit financial activities, they have the ability to share that with an agency such as the justice department or fbi or with the u.s. attorney's offices or with the criminal division at justice. >> that is very helpful. i feel like i've been sort of working around the edging of trying to understand this agency. it's not that old. fincen hasn't existed in this form for all that many years. >> right. >> so there isn't a lot written about it in terms of understanding. >> right. >> we played a clip there from senator warner talking about what he had requested from fincen and what he was expecting to get and he mentioned two things. flash notices and 314a requests and i keep seeing those two

things described over and over again as relevant records here. what do those two things mean? >> so, with 314-a, basically, that's -- fincen getsts authority to collect information under the statue which refers back to the u.s. patriot act. so under 314-a, fincen regulates banks or financial institutions, not just banks. it could be like a western union-type organization. but they have the authority to regulate them. and what that means is basically they can require financial institutions to provide information with respect to what are called suspicious activity reports or currency transaction reports. so, for example, everybody has heard of that rule where if you -- at a bank if you go in and try and deposit over $10,000, that sort of sets off a red flag and so that would be

reported in something called the currency transaction report. so the currency transaction report data, the suspicious activity data gets collected and then fincen has the ability to analyze it. >> okay. >> so what's interesting about what fincen does as opposed to, say, the fbi, they are already collecting that information. it's housed there. and so then it's just a matter of combing through it as you do with other types of intelligence to figure out what kinds of information you can piece together and connect the dots. >> i get it. i'm finally starting to get it. julie, thank you for helping us understand this. it's been an impenetrable part about this. >> thank you. >> that is fascinating. so they want those suspicion thousand activity reports. they want those flash notices about things that might be

related to terrorism or financing or whatever and if anything would be relevant to the trump/russia investigation. that doesn't mean the treasury department is out there as financial cops looking for this stuff. they collect it all the time. it's a matter of someone going through the records to see if there's a match for what they're looking for. we'll be right back. (vo) when i brought jake home, i wanted him to eat healthy. so i feed jake purina cat chow naturals indoor, a nutritious formula with no artificial flavors.

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24 hours after a suicide bombing at a big arena in manchester, england, last night. the initial reporting was 19 people killed. officials have now increased that toll to 22 people killed, including children as young as 8 among the victims. scotland yard reports that it is, quote, large-scale, fast moving and making good progress. a top terrorism official at scotland yard said multiple searches are still ongoing. he said they cannot be certain if there was a wider group involved in the attack. police arrested the brother of the suicide bomber. it's not clear if he's involved but security officerhave been questioning him. isis has claimed responsibility for the attack and they don't seem to have any specific knowledge of how the attack was carried out that would prove that it was them.

can also tell you that the unfolding of this story, the getting and giving of this information of this story has become -- it's always fraught after a terrorist attack, honestly, but now in this case it's a matter of some international controversy. a number of american media outlets named the bombing suspect, a 22-year-old manchester native whose parts had fled the gadhafi regime in libya. the name broke over here even as british officials were saying they might not release that name at all today while the investigation was still unfolding. the guardian newspaper tonight reporting, quote, the trump administration's apparent indiscretion seems likely to cause consternation in london and could raise questions about future cooperation in the long term. we needed another reminder that

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in supporting the russian government. it's been said that when the russians want to cultivate a u.s. person, they will do it over a long period of time. is that your experience? >> yeah, i guess a lot depends on the u.s. person and their willingness to work with the russians. >> were you aware that they were attempting to cultivate then real estate developer donald trump for almost eight years? >> i'm not going to talk about any individuals. >> are russian oligarchs encouraged to invest in the united states? >> i would fully anticipate that some of the key russian oligarchs and their business interests are attacked on a regu bis f information. yes. >> so were any of the oligarchs

investing in u.s. properties owned by then real estate donald trump? >> i donnot going to answer tha. >> today we learn that the businesses of trump national security adviser mike flynn are the next subpoena targets for the senate intelligence committee. even as mike flynn himself tries to avoid testifying by taking the fifth. today we also learned that one of trump's business lawyers is who he is expected to bring on as his outside counsel to preserve his presidency in the face of these ongoing russia investigations. and this, of course, all comes in the wake "the washington post" reporting on friday that the fbi investigations are increasingly focused on whether financial crimes were committed by people close to the president. and now tonight we've been talking about these new unsettling questions about the treasury department, about whether the trump

administration, the treasury department under trump, is actually handing over the banking and financial information that it has that may be relevant to this investigation that has been requested and is supposedly being handed over to the investigatory bodies. as all of these signs start to point towards money and business ties and finances, the one house democrat on both the armed services committee and intelligence committee keeps bringing the focus back to money, back to finances, back to business ties. if money is the center of the investigations now, if money is the key to figuring out the trump/russia story and whether all of these contacts between the kremlin and trump world were all coiidences or not, do w really believe that the money is followable? are these committees, these investigators actually able to access the information that they need and follow these trails? joining us now is congresswoman man jackie speier, member of the

house armed services and intelligence committee. congresswoman man speier, thank you for your time. >> great to be with you, rachel. >> so part of the reason i wanted to talk to you about this, i feel you have been obviously doing all your own work and all of your own reading on this and you've been pushing on some issues before your colleagues seem to be raising them. and i wanted to ask you how you feel about the financial side of this investigation and that question about whether or not your committee, the other investigatory bodies are really capable of following the money here. >> you know, it's a really good question because you really need forensic accountants. you need fincen operatives that would be stationed in our committees to kind of do that work. certainly the fbi has the ability to do that but our committee staff really needs to be buttress be more experts who can follow the money and the money is really what will give us the answers, i believe.

>> can you get that? what would it take to staff up the committee with more experts, more full-time staffers than you've got right now? would that need to be a congressional appropriation passed and signed by the president? >> well, there has been an appropriation offer to the committee and the staffing-up is taking place. i believe there is one person from fincen who has been out posting to the committee. there's a potential to have that kind of expertise with us as we delve into these issues. the other area i'm concerned about is this eb-5 visa made available to individuals in foreign countries who, for 500,000 or a million dollars of an investment, can actually get a green card in the united states. and once you have that green card, you can move backwards and forwards and around with a great deal. i wonder to what extent these oligarchs that have purchased units in trump tower and in new

york have gained them through those eb-5 visas. we know that the kushner family had attempted to use that in china very >> is there any line that you can draw including that you can direct us to that suggests what any connection might be between trump business ties and russia, trump, russian financing or having russian buyers for his properties and what that has to do with the russian attack on the election. i feel like i'm starting to learn a lot about each of those two things, i'm not sure how they connect, though. >> well, it probably has more to do with whether or not the president is going to be willing to take on president putin. if, in fact, he is tied to him for financial reasons within his real estate development empire. and there are a number of them, most of them is open source

information, that has close ties with the trump organization and who have done deals with the trump organization. so you couple that with the fact that so many of the campaign operatives have relationships with russia, with president putin and provide services or with some of the -- and it looks like a web that is so intertwined that there's no dote' finding concern among any of us t we don't have a president who is independent of the putin regime. >> congresswoman jackie spear, california member of the house and the intelligence committee, really appreciate your time tonight, ma'am, thank you very much for being with us. >> thank you. >> all right. we'll be right back. stay with us. >> all right women are amazing.

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. >> count it out. >> how was it with admiral rogers? that is something that i would like to withhold that question at this particular point in

time. >> i believe that was a full nine seconds. i think that was a nine-second pause, translate in congress time, into a nine-month pregnant pause for the director of national intelligence. what he gave birth to at the end of that pause is next. blp got it. rumor confirmed. they're playing. -what? -we gotta go. -where? -san francisco. -when? -friday. we gotta go. [ tires screech ] any airline. any hotel. any time.

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nsa and asked them both in march to please publicly deny nich any collusion in the russia investigation. nbc news reported that after each of those officials got those separate sort of disturbing phone calls from the present, the two of them talked about it amost themselves. both the two men exchanged notes about their conversations with the president. the director of national intelligence was asked about that today. >> have you talked about this issue with admiral rogers? that is -- i will like to withhold that question at this particular point in time. >> i would like to withhold at this particular point in time.

if those two officials talk to each other, if that reporting holds up, it means that coats and rogers head of office of national intelligence and head of nsa they're both contemporaneous witnesses to each other's account what the president did when he very inappropriately contacted them and had them weigh in on an fbi investigation. if there does end up being an obstruction of justice, you can expect dan coats the director of national intelligence and mike rogers to be very very important witnesses, not just for what they experienced, but as corroborating witnesses for each other. oops. that does it for us tonight. we'll see you again tomorrow, now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnel. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening rachel. if i did the pause right now, would that throw you off just a